Click here to see all 30 years of anecdotes from the Open 13 Provence in Comics:
Note: I wrote the piece below after reading through all 30 of Arnaud Brosset’s great comic strips in French (with a dictionary, of course). The links below for each player will take you to the corresponding comic strip.
Thirty Years in Marseille
Ivan the Terrible arrives before dawn. No electricity. Germany’s Boris B. comes the following year. I bend over too far to please him. The Chilean Rios has all his stuff stolen at the airport. At a player’s party, a female strip-tease artist wants a picture with Guga’s smile. The ATP morality police step in.
Two ways to process losing a final: Cedric Pioline–now 0-9 in ATP finals–walks all the way back to his hotel. Magnus Norman heads for the discotheque, puts all the player’s drinks on his tab.
The big 3 in pictures: The cartoonist draws an exhausted pre-gluten-free Djokovic after he loses to “The Wall” (Gilles Simon). When a cartoonist draws Rafa’s bicep, should he exaggerate its size per the comic tradition? Is it melodrama or reality when the cartoonist draws the narrator in tears on the phone with Federer? Federer calling to say he’s sorry. He has to withdraw this year.
Somehow someone paints the lines 10 cm too long. A night of work, anxiety. Depression settles in like a Nordic winter for Robin Soderling after he wins the Rotterdam Marseilles double. He will never return to form. Back from multiple wrist surgeries, Juan Martin del Potro wins Marseilles. He will never return to form.
Duchamp signs his toilet “R. Mutt.” The toilet Nick Kyrgios used all tournament is out of order. He has not lost his service once, and the final’s about to begin. Krygios hails the firm FARINA as they come to fix the toilet. Vite les gars. Quick guys.
A magician named Fabrice pulls a Marseilles tournament victory out of a hat, but “Le Monf” the greatest entertainer of them all.
Artist Bio: Arnaud Brosset followed the classic course in Art at the school of “Beaux-Arts.” A big tennis fan, he first started to create comic strips to tell Tennis Stories during Covid. You can follow him and his work on Instagram.
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